Archive for the ‘safari’ category

Traffic around Kampala is notorious and getting worse. It’s quite common to turn your engine off as you sit still for 10 minutes or more. Yesterday it took us an hour and a half to drive 3 kilometres / 2 miles, bumper to bumper, in and out of...

Owino market on a Saturday afternoon is intense. But it’s a friendly place and there’s no need to worry about Neil – accompanying two ladies shopping. “Eh muzungu how are you?” “Which [Premier League] team are you?” all the...

The days starts far too early: and as we push through Kampala’s heavy early morning traffic we read that Kampala’s Kasubi Tombs, the main historical site of Uganda’s Buganda tribe, has been raised to the ground. Speculation abounds and...

Uganda Wildlife Authority rangers will soon, for the first time ever, have a permanent base in the Dura sector, an area of 400km² north of Lake George in Queen Elizabeth National Park, thanks to the Uganda Conservation Foundation, the organization...

A few highlights that didn’t make it onto the blog before: Feeding time at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Pure magic. Lilly Ajarova’s project was voted Best Ecotourism Project at the World...

A toad hops towards us as we sit on a stone wall at the Ndere Cultural Centre. I love the casual reminder that He Was Here First: “you can have your dancing troupe and your landscaped gardens, but I’m a toad and I’ll go where I...

The South African coastline – particularly near the Cape – is littered with shipwrecks and Arniston (Waenhuiskrans) takes its name from the ship that was wrecked here in 1815. Only six of the 378 on board survived. [PHOTO – not...

Awaking to a nightmare at 4.45 a.m. was not the ideal start to a day that involved leaving the house before dawn, on my own, for a drive across country to dive into cold Atlantic water with man-eating sharks …. [Main Photo courtesy of Michael...

The summit of Kilimanjaro pokes through the thick blanket of cloud thousands of feet beneath us – an image I’ll never forget – as we fly south. The three hour journey to Johannesburg seemed to last an eternity: a week of burning the...

Woke to the sound of birds (and possibly a baboon!) this morning, at the Uganda Wildlife Authority hostel on the Mweya peninsula in Queen Elizabeth National Park. A fantastically beautiful place tho the accom is very basic: only 1 tap works, the...